


And then he Retired

by Flakingnapstich



Series: Vignettes of Maria Hill [1]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Iron Man (Comic), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: 31_days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:14:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flakingnapstich/pseuds/Flakingnapstich





	And then he Retired

Hill hated being on the run. Everything had, predictably, gone south and Hill had been on the losing side of it all.

She still thought she'd been on the right side, but it was still the losing side. The effort to register superheroes, lead by Tony Stark, had fallen into ruin. Now she and Stark were among those on the run. Stark himself had literally erased most of his brain to conceal the superhero identities he’d fought so hard to get revealed. S.H.I.E.L.D. was gone, replaced by H.A.M.M.E.R. which in turn was hunting her.

Maria Hill stared at the screen. It was showing surveillance footage some of her contacts had smuggled her. Captain Steve Rogers was standing on a rooftop, handing his shield to Bucky.

She closed her eyes, the footage still playing in her mind’s eye, seared there by endless repetition.

“I did this,” she thought. “I stood against him. I stood for registration and he against.” She still thought she was right. It HAD been right. The Avengers, the X-Men and every copycat team that had sprung up, every lone vigilante, they were as much of a threat as the people they fought. But still, there had to have been a better way. There had to have been a way that hadn’t resulted in all out war, in Steve Rogers, Captain America being assassinated, trapped in time, brought back and then possessed by the Red Skull. Now free, alive and restored, even pardoned for his role in the war, he was retiring, handing his shield to another.

Maria opened her eyes and switched to the pilfered scan of paternity tests performed on a dead fetus.

His unborn child had died because of this, killed when the Red Skull tried to literally possess it, like a demon from a Medieval horror story.

“I helped kill Captain America’s Baby” Hill thought. It was an irrational guilt, but with all the real blame to go around these days, a bit of irrational guilt could slip in undetected.

Her mind drifted back to a scene from her childhood. She was painting a generic army man with Cap’s red, white and blue, then gluing a similarly painted button to the figure’s arm. She remembered and old Newsreel clip where Cap had said, “Everyone has a part to play, everyone has a role in the fight. You need to find yours, and don’t let ANYONE stand in your way.” It had become a rallying cry during the feminist movement of the 1960’s, a doubly important history clip when it had been shown to her in her own school days. Cap had already made a mark, and reverberated with the next generation before her parents even met.

“He’ll make a Hell of a Father some day,” a voice said.

Hill jumped and spun, pulling her gun on Tony Stark. Despite his current lack of armor, he was unphased.

“A better Dad than I could ever be,” he continued. “He’s got those instincts. He could give a rousing speech to motivate a toddler to potty train overnight.”

“Are you making fun of him?” Hill asked, unsure.

Stark gave a self-deprecating smile. “Nope,” he said. He held up his hands in mock humility. “Telling God’s Honest Truth. Even if the Super-Soldier Serum doesn’t change his children, being raised by that man will make them heroes.”

“Shouldn’t you be nervous about the gun I’m pointing at your chest?”

“Should I?” Stark said. “I startled you, you pointed a gun at me. You’re not going to shoot me without a reason.”

Hill lowered her gun.

Stark looked at the image on Hill’s computer pad, then switched it back to the video she’d been watching a moment before. “I wish I could tell him,” Stark whispered under his breath.

“Tell him what?” Hill asked.

Stark looked up, confused. “Oh, I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

Stark watched the video for a second. “I wish I could tell him he was right,” Stark said, “And I’m glad he won and not me.”

He turned and walked away, quiet and thoughtful.

Hill turned off the computer and sat down. Now she was thinking of the imaginary world she’d created in her mind when she was a child. After every interaction with her own father, every beating, every shouting match, every cruel, biting comment, she’d replayed the scene with Captain America as her Dad.

Every time she was yelled at for getting into a fight had been rewritten in her mind as either a compliment for standing up and doing the right thing or a conversation about what she’d done wrong and how she needed to control her temper. Every apology she’d ever offered as a child had been because the Captain America in her mind had told her it was the right thing to do.

Every time her Father had blamed her for her mother dying during childbirth had been rewritten as a comment on how proud her Mother would be of her.

Maria Hill began to cry. “You were a Dad,” she said to herself, “And I probably shared you with a million other kids.”

Maria Hill was a cold, cold woman because of her own Father. Deep inside, there was a spark, a kernel that knew this was wrong, knew something was missing. That spark was the reason she was a hero and not a villain, the reason she fought to protect and save, not conquer and destroy. She contemplated this spark. She had a detached pride in her cunning, her physical abilities, in the attributes that had made her a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and director. That spark, however, is what she valued and cherished. As she looked at it in her mind's eye, it was round and indestructible, red, white and blue.


End file.
